Toril and I walk into the crowd, approaching the armory. "It's a good thing I got that twenty gold from you, eh? Otherwise, I would barely be able to afford these fees!"
"Good for you, I suppose. Well, I really best be going, good luck…"
"Now now, dear friend, why leave so soon? Stick around and go shopping with me and I will buy you a drink for your troubles!"
"What's in it for you, anyway?" he asks, sounding oddly suspicious of me. As if there would be any reason to doubt my good intentions!
"Why, do you truly think so little of me? I just want to spend some quality time with my best friend, and purchase him a drink while I'm at it."
After thinking for a moment, he asks "So, you want my help in picking out a weapon that is appropriately priced and good for your needs?"
Placing my hand over my heart, I saturate my voice with mock horror. "Why, Toril, to think so little of me as to assume that I merely wish to use your knowledge and experience in weapons shopping, as opposed to my real motivation of spending time with you! This is an outrage, I am deeply insulted!"
"You are a very odd man. But sure, I'll help you pick out an appropriate weapon. However, you'd better not complain when I make you buy me the most expensive drink in this place. It's the least you could do for me after taking a year of my savings."
"Taking? I won that money fair and square, and you know it. If anything, that arrangement benefitted you, my wager was worth objectively more than your own, thirty coins of my wager was matched by your own offer of directions and a recommendation worth exactly four gold. Accounting for the value of your recommendation, I wagered twenty-six gold coins for some directions, don't you dare consider yourself a victim."
"Of course not, you won my money fair and square. Though it is a bit unusual for someone who doesn't even have ten gold sitting around to have a sword of the quality of your own."
"All I got off my teacher, and relatively recently at that. I don't really consider it to be all that strange."
"Mmm…" is his only response as we pull open the door to the building inside a building that is the armory. Actually, I suppose many malls do something similar.
Inside is a single moderately large room with some weapon-laden tables in the middle and weapons and armor lining the walls.
"Welcome to the Imperial Guild Hall Adventurers' Armory. How may I help you?" asks a man standing behind a counter on the far wall.
Before I can answer, Toril says "Don't mind us, we are just looking for a weapon for my friend here."
Toril leads the way to a section of wall hung exclusively with swords. "The higher quality weapons are all on the wall. While more expensive than those on the table, there quality is essentially guaranteed."
Though the number of swords on the wall pales in comparison to the number on the tables devoted to such a weapon, there is still an impressively wide variety. The cost of each item is written on a tag hanging from its handle, and the cost of these swords hanging on the wall ranges from a single gold to a currency that I have yet to encounter: platinum coins.
Easily the most expensive item hanging on the wall, high up, appearing more as a display piece than an actual product, is a gleaming red blade labeled 'mythical grade adamantite sword, 10000 platinum coins.'
From my lesson from Reinhart, I am able to recognize this weapon as being of an entire grade above even my own weapon, and from the knowledge I have picked up about this world's pricing, one must certainly pay for such an item.
A platinum coin is equivalent to a thousand gold coins, ten thousand platinum is thus ten million gold. Such a price is ludicrous beyond belief, enough for a man to live comfortably for over a million years. Even on prices of a nation-wide scale, such an expense is beyond the entire national budget of Eroen for a year, just for a single weapon. I mean, I knew mythical weapons were valuable, but this is ridiculous beyond belief, nobody other than a king of a large nation could afford such an exorbitant price. That such a weapon would be held in a mere armory… well, considering the role of the adventurer's guild, it's probably pretty safe here. Still, this is ridiculous.
Seeing the object of my fixation, Toril laughs. "I hope you're not thinking of buying that, the price is intentionally set ridiculously high. This place's owner became tired of requests to buy the piece, so he set upon it a price so high that no one would ever again bother him."
"Ah, that explains it. Even for a mythical-grade weapon, that price did seem a bit absurd, I'm glad to see currency hasn't yet become [that] inflated. For goodness' sake, you could keep a city alive on that kind of money for decades!"
"Well, then, it seems the price is working. Now, let's find a weapon more in your affordable range. How much do you have to spend?"
"Hmm… I think I could part with about fifteen gold," I say, after calculating my funds. Nine for a potion recipe, twenty for the duel, minus nine for the entire cost of this registration, fifteen gold on a sword and I will have five left over. While that may not sound like much, especially in the face of swords that cost ten million gold, it should keep me alive for some time. As for the cost of this sword, I have allocated more to it than the cost of five houses in this world, it better be good.
"Oh, so much? With that, we should be able to find something of very good quality." Saying this, he begins to take weapons down from the wall one at a time, skipping over those he does not consider to be of acceptable quality. Every sword he gives me, I hold by the hilt and give a few practice swings before conducting some magic down their blades, seeing how well the work for my needs. I hand back most of the swords, but for the handful with which I am most satisfied, I set them aside for further comparison.
Through this process, I am quite glad to have Toril's assistance. While I may be the superior swordsman, he is far superior at actually sifting through the weapons and only handing me high quality weapons to swing around; without his presence, I would almost certainly end up with some shoddy, good-for-nothing sword, his presence is most definitely worth the price of any drink he could request from me later.
Once he makes his way through all the weapons on the wall, I compare those that I have kept out, testing each of them by how well they feel in my hand and their magic conduction capability, as well as the quality of their make and durability of the material.
I get the options down to the blade that feels best and most controllable in my hand and the blade that both best conducts magic and is made with the highest quality materials and methods. Though I quite like both weapons, the choice is rather obvious: I already have a superb blade for non-magic use, it only makes sense to get the one that best handles magic conduction. As for the better quality, that is only an added bonus. No sword I could afford would compare with Reinhart's, but a blade being of high quality is still a nice bonus.
After handing the shopkeeper the money for the blade, a perfectly on budget fifteen gold, we again enter into the main body of the guild hall. While Toril is all for getting food and drinks now and having me come back on my own in the future to undergo my rank assessment, I veto this idea. Sure, it may be the [nice] thing to do, but it goes against what I [feel] like doing, and I prioritize my enjoyment of life over the feelings of others. Add that to my desire to get this registration fully out of the way, how could I put this off?
Toril grumbling all the way, I lead the way to the door that was previously indicated as being the one that leads to the rank assessment area.
Finally tired of Toril's complaints, I sigh. "Fine, get your food and drink now, I'll pay for it when I finish."
Without even a polite denial, Toril immediately starts towards the bar. Shaking my head, I pass through the door in front of me, after which I am surprised to find myself in a courtyard.